China and Russia have already effectively seceded from the 'open internet'. Those governments have firewalls and killswitches set up in such a way that they can censor whatever they want.
If they wish to reap the benefits of the open internet, it's only fair they face consequences when they abuse their power.
While technologically there is a valid case we all know that in reality the system will be abused once implemented, named by oppressive regimes like Iran and China. It's no surprise that China and Russia are pushing schemes like this. Both Iran and China have already stated they want 'their' own version of the internet and China is already succeeding. Theoretically any country could claim to have an 'open' internet but in practice charge insane fees for international traffic, effectively censoring their citizens. Let's hope that doesn't happen.
This will just lead to a further balkanization of the internet. China and Russia aren't going to sit by and be beholden to western tech and financial stacks when they can be cut off at any time.
Would you want to provide infrastructure for Russian and Chinese citizens to access the parts of the internet that are censored by their autocratic regimes? What if the only way to do that also requires incurring a risk that a child predator might use your computer too?
It's funny how the West criticised China or Russia for censorship and firewalling the internet...
Now they seem to be in a contest who makes more restrictive and privacy-free network...
I think the easiest way to undermine China right now is to trick them into further limiting it's own connectivity with the global internet by banking on their zeal for censorship and their itchy trigger finger.
Not that I'm advocating this as a strategy, it's more of a warning. China has enemies, and those enemies can do a lot of damage feeding the fire that drives it's governments oppressive policies. And they can do it practically for free.
As we've seen, it's very easy for a malicious actor like Russia to sow division in western nations through the internet. It would be harder for them to do so in China, where the internet and it's use by citizens is heavily regulated.
Is the Chinese model of the internet the inevitable path all nations will need to go down in order to survive?
China kind of already does. Close off a lot of foreign major competitors, block objectionable sites, have domestic ones replace them which tie into the government.
The entire West could do this, and in 10 years time either the Russians or the Chinese would have filled the gap.
So then you've got a bunch of authoritarian regimes that are censoring the Internet, and the stability (perceived or otherwise) they've got is dependent on countries who don't care about human rights.
Giving easy soft power to the Russians and Chinese isn't ideal.
At least, more people will now be exposed to our utter hypocrisy. I used to be a staunch supporter of a free unrestricted internet but the disproportionate power US has is unsustainable - and frankly a threat to sovereign nations. China's firewall seems to have been the right path after all.
That's not going to be a problem. When it comes to censorship of the Internet, your primary risk is the 5 / 14 / 19 eyes groups, not China.
China isn't a critical part of the global Internet today and they'll be even less a part of it in another decade. They operate their own separate network that only poorly connects to the Internet, by design. That separation will increase considerably over this decade.
Xi is currently putting new restraints into place to pull Chinese tech companies back even further from the Internet and into their own isolated network.
When China becomes the largest economy by GDP, it'll be meaningless to the operation of the Internet, which they'll only kinda-sorta be a part of.
Further, China is now widely regarded as the top adversary to the US and the West. That context will get increasingly confrontational and war-like in the coming years. Nearly all members of Congress are on board the anti-China bandwagon now, they've all gotten the message from above (the military industrial complex, which dictates nearly all foreign policy). The cultural atmosphere will increasingly become like it was when the USSR was the primary adversary for decades. As that confrontation increases, China's influence over the Internet will be intentionally reduced by the powers that actually do control the Internet today. China sees that coming as well and is taking steps ahead of time to reduce its exposure, points of influence and risk. At this point China views a military confrontation with the West as close to inevitable (which recent Xi speeches have elaborated on).
This increasing separation effort by China is in part designed to make it possible for China to attempt to destroy/damage the Internet - if it comes to that - without posing much terminal risk to their network and economy in the process. If they take down the Internet, it'll butcher the economies of their adversaries, while their own network remains highly functional. This is something the West is almost entirely unprepared for, and China is aggressively preparing for it; an epic mistake by the West.
China has literally a separate Internet, and fines/jails those who use it w/o permission; Russia crushes dissent, to the point of assassinating opposition leaders and incarcerating journos.
The US doesn't seem to be as effective in brutal opposition to infiltration. There's no moral equivalent.
It seems like the eventual trajectory of such censorship is the creation of a completely separate Internet that is China-only. With more and more sites from around the world being blocked, the demands aren't going away, and so parallel censorship-friendly sites go up inside The Great Firewall. I wonder if one day, China will get sick of maintaining the Firewall and just turn off connections to the rest of the world.
China de-risking from US controlled internet is really ambitious - if they pull it off, it might become the only country that achieves digital sovereignty. I expect Russia, Iran and other designated enemies of the US to try and follow suit but no other has the domestic market size to pull it off. Whatever, we think of the geopolitics, it's a fascinating experiment
India and Japan generally don't censor foreign websites, and their governments survive OK.
It's a big loss of face for the present leaders to change their policy. But we keep on hearing the phrase from within China: "Perhaps the new generation of leaders taking over in October 2012 will have different ideas about web censorship". If the policy is going to change, it'll be soon after this time when no government leaders "lose face".
The US and EU are also preparing to challenge China at the WTO claiming the Great Firewall violates free trade. If the US and EU can get their timing and level of prodding right, the Firewall might be dismantled. China's already given their web businesses such as Baidu enough startup advantage from the Firewall, and will probably find other ways to give advantage to subsequent startups.
But... the infrastructure's already there in China to block foreign websites. Anything that exists but isn't used will be used again sooner or later by some politician, so thanks to Cisco et al the Firewall will always exist even if "dismantled" under WTO enforcement. Just like the US military is there to defend the integrity and borders of the Union, to be used as a last resort, but gets used to invade Iraq for cheap oil.
China has also made it their goal to bifurcate the internet in order to prop up their authoritarian state. I don't see why the rest of the world should play along with that. It's frustrating in the extreme to see big Western companies repeatedly bow to the Communist party's wishes only to get all of their IP stolen by a domestic clone with the backing of the government.
If they wish to reap the benefits of the open internet, it's only fair they face consequences when they abuse their power.
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